


Pratdicament

by millionstar



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Abject Silliness, Humor, M/M, Smut, abuse of neckerchiefs, royal wankage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-23 04:12:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/617944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millionstar/pseuds/millionstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where <i>do</i> you hide a neckerchief soiled in the heat of passion? Arthur has no clue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pratdicament

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to [my LIveJournal](http://millionstar.livejournal.com/226978.html) on 11/25/12

None of this is my fault.

None of it.

Well, okay. Maybe some of it _is_ my fault, but let me explain. If you want the truth, it's Merlin's fault.

As usual.

Last night Merlin and I had a bit of an argument. I can't even remember what it was over, actually. All I remember are flashes of his lips moving repeatedly and those big dumb ears and the sound of his voice, that maddening, irritating voice that just goes on and on and on and on as though he has some sort of mental condition that prevents him from being able to shut his mouth. It went something like this:

_"You really are the biggest prat out of all the prats in Albion, you know."_

_"Oh? Precisely how many prats are there in Albion, hmm, Merlin? Do you have factual numbers you can present me with?"_

_Merlin narrows his eyes._

_I smirk victoriously._

_He may indeed think that he's clever, but truth be told he has no idea who he's dealing with and I wish that once, just once, the idiot would remember that. But no, it's like he lacks that little voice that warns your brain that the words you are about to utter are most likely not in your best interests. Well, okay, he may indeed be in possession of said voice, but his is just telling him to constantly irritate me._

_He throws his red neckerchief down angrily; he'd removed it in the stifling heat of the day._

_"It doesn't matter how many there actually are."_

_"Really?"_

_"Yes. All I know is that you are their king. You, Arthur," he bows dramatically, "sit upon the noble throne of Pratdonia and lord over all of them, while wearing your royal pratness as though it were a badge of honor."_

_I have to admit it, I'm impressed, and to show him that I am I clap loudly. "Wow. Now that's a quality insult. How long did it take you to come up with that one?"_

_"Been saving it for a while now."_

_"Really?"_

_"Really. Did you like it?"_

_"I did."_

_"Thanks."_

_"I liked it so much that I'm gonna reward you."_

_"You are?" Merlin's face lights up, but only for a moment._

You might think that his simple naiveté alone would have been enough to save him but you'd be wrong. I had to send him to the stocks, and if I keep saying it enough times, I'll actually start believing that I did it because I was irritated with him. But if you really want the truth, that isn't really a very accurate representation of the logic behind my motives.

It's the stocks. More specifically, it's the thought of Merlin in the stocks. 

Sometimes I worry that he might figure it out but then I remember it's Merlin and that he's not too bright and that calms me some. It wouldn't do for him to know that he ends up there so frequently because the very thought of it turns me on exponentially. 

Like mad. 

Truth be told, nothing matches it. 

None of the scores of maidens that father has thrown at me in the past couple of years can compare to the sight of Merlin, bent over on display for my eyes to drink in. It's just something I've come to accept, as surely as the sun rises every day. It's very true that I had pretty amazing dreams last night just thinking about it. 

Now morning has broken and I find that my mind is full of all sorts of ideas, none of them chaste. Perhaps I'm feeling naughty. Perhaps I really am the royal prat that he proclaims I am to anyone who will listen. It's unclear, but what is crystal clear is that I'm suddenly and painfully hard and it just might be that very thing that prompts me to reach into my breeches and palm myself. My eyes fall onto his neckerchief and I swallow as I pick it up and press it to my face, inhaling deeply. The scent therein is unmistakably male and incredibly arousing and an inherent realization dawns on me. 

I want to see the way I look against the red fabric that hangs from his neck nearly every day. 

For some reason, when I pull out my cock and drape it with the item in question, I get strangely contemplative. It's not the first time I've had a wank with Merlin on my mind, no, but it is one of the more satisfying ones that I've indulged in. I find myself wondering what or whom he focuses on when he does this very thing. If he has a partner he's kept that fact well hidden from me, but he's basically with me all of the time, so I don't see how he can, really. Can he?

Not that I care or anything. 

I chase those thoughts away with much filthier ones, ones involving Merlin, bound and bent double. Merlin, and the way the sunlight plays on his hair, causing it to appear a deep shade of blue at times. Merlin, for all his bumbling incompetence, is capable of grace at the most random of moments. Merlin, who, if I am very honest with myself, dominates my thoughts in a way no other person ever has. 

I groan, tugging roughly as pure pleasure begins to build in my belly. I've just arrived at my favorite fantasy, the one where I'm fucking Merlin while he's in the stocks, when I come rather violently, my free hand clutching my bedpost so I don't collapse. After a moment of recovery I look down and wrinkle my nose.

I've made something of a mess all over his red neckerchief. An impressive mess, if I do say so myself. When a sudden knock comes at the door it's as if by habit that I say "Come in!". A split second later, I realize the neckerchief is in my hand still and the door is in the process of being opened. Panic overtakes me but only for a moment. 

I do the only logical thing that I can when presented with such a conundrum.

I shove it (along with my softening cock) into my breeches and turn around.

"My lord," Gwen bows, rushing into the room in a flurry of activity, "since Merlin is indisposed I thought I would come attend to your-" She stops talking and her eyes widen and I swallow loudly when I follow her line of sight to my crotch. 

I look down at it myself. 

It's positively bulging.

"Um," she shakes her head, flushing, "to your laundry, I mean, if-"

"Yes. Yes. Thank you, Gwen," I say, much more awkwardly and loudly than I mean to. "That will be all."

Thankfully she scurries away, her eyes wide and her lower lip between her teeth. 

I wonder if she realizes she forgot to take away the laundry. 

Odd. 

No matter; there are urgent things to attend to, namely the successful removal of this garment from my chambers. I can't have this found in my laundry, not by Gwen and certainly not by Merlin himself; he would never let me live it down. Various scenarios enter my mind as I pace, the offending piece of fabric itchy against my crotch. Just as I begin to ponder over how long it would take someone to find the neckerchief if I hid it in the armory another distraction presents itself. 

"Arthur!" I can hear father bellowing boisterously outside my door. I've heard that tone of voice before and I know that it means he has no intention of stopping to knock politely. I run as fast as my feet will carry me and I just manage to sit down at my desk as he bursts through the door. I glance up at him from the papers in front of me in a bored manner.

"Yes, father?" 

"Why couldn't you, just once, play nicely? Why did you have to be so rude to Lady Alice? Have you no consideration for her feelings, no decorum?"

I laugh, trying to hide the fact that I'm scratching my balls. "It's not as serious as all that, father! I merely told her I wasn't interested in her that way. She's very nice, but she's not for me."

"You told her she had a face like a dog!"

"She _does_! Have you _seen_ the dog that Leon feeds each day at the training grounds? I swear, it's uncanny, she has the same long face! It was a compliment! It's a... really pretty dog-" 

Father walks toward me, pointing at me with unmistakable anger that actually succeeds in making me shrink back from it a bit. "She and her father are here and you will make an appearance immediately and apologize."

I'm unable to suppress the eye roll that follows his announcement and in return I get a narrowing of the eyes and a firm "now". As soon as he's gone I stand up and shimmy my hips a little before reaching into my breeches and pulling the fabric out. Father's interruption threw my concentration off and all I know to do now is to shove the neckerchief under my pillow.

About an hour later, after a long and frankly boring meeting in which I likened Lady Alice's face to a meadow of spring flowers, I return to my chambers and am stunned to see Merlin there, standing uncomfortably close to my bed for my liking. To make matters worse, he opens his mouth before I can say a single word and I am aghast to see that he's found the item of clothing he was missing.

"You were keeping it under your pillow? Really, Arthur, I didn't know you cared," he teases. And is it ever a tease; the tone of voice he is using, his bare neck on display, the curl of his hair at the nape of his neck... all of these things, together, are threatening to drive me mad.

"I don't know how that got there," I say, sweat breaking out on my forehead as Merlin comes closer, the garment in his hand.

"Yeah you do," he murmurs, standing uncomfortably close now, so close his breath is ghosting across my cheek and the blood is rushing through my veins. He leans in to continue speaking, "you made quite a mess of it, didn't you?"

So it has come to this. This is the final shame, my undoing, in the end. I decide to look him in the eye as I make one last attempt to weasel my way out of this.

"Honestly, Merlin. Have you been at the cider again?" I ask, crossing my arms. 

"Hmm. 'M not as stupid as you seem to think I am." I don't know what to say in response because I'm too busy staring at his eyelashes, how long and black they are and thinking that I'd love to feel them flutter against my bare skin. Merlin's lips are at my ear, delivering a whisper as his hands latch onto my waist. "Was it good?"

Of all the things I could possibly come back with, of all the things I could say to him I decide to take a chance and be as honest with him as I know to be. That's the plan at least, but he's so close to me now that the heat from his body is assaulting my senses and creating a ripple of tension between us that one of us is going to have to act on soon.

"Yes," I reply. 

Merlin doesn't waste a moment; he pulls me close and kisses me softly, experimentally. His touch makes my head spin and my heart fly away and my blood boil but most alarming is the fact that I feel like if he lets me go I might lose myself somehow. I'm taken aback by this, by the fact that kissing Merlin is an incredibly special and precious thing. 

It's like coming home. 

Just as I bury my fingers in his impossibly soft hair and deepen our kiss, he pulls back with a loud smacking of lips. Our eyes meet and we both laugh a happy, boisterous laugh at the situation we find ourselves in, and at just how mad it all seems on the surface, while just beneath it's the simplest of beginnings. He nods at the neckerchief, tossed aside in the heat of our kiss.

"I'm not washing that," Merlin says, breathless. He beams as the pad of my thumb caresses his cheekbone softly. I choose to kiss my reply into his open lips. 

"I'll buy you a new one."

"You know, you say I'm the idiot but you... you really aren't very smart, are you?"

"What?"

"You should have just tossed it in the fire. That would have been an easy way to destroy the evidence."

My mouth falls open in shock. Well, _damn_.

"Who's the idiot now?"

"Shut up, _Mer_ lin," I grumble as our lips meet again.


End file.
